The Long Beach State women’s tennis team won its 12th Big West championship when it defeated UC Santa Barbara in the conference tournament on April 26.
The Daily 49er caught up with head coach Jenny Hilt-Costello, who opened up about some of the challenges of repeating as conference champions, recruiting international players and meeting expectations.
Is it harder or easier to repeat as conference champions every year?
I think it gets harder each year. The more often we win it, I think the bigger the target is on our back with our conference opponents. I think [our opponents] come out with more intensity. I told the girls today that I really truly believe that each conference match we play, we’re beating these girls [who are] playing their best tennis because they come out swinging away feeling like they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Obviously, we have something at stake since we’re defending champs and we’ve had such a good record. I don’t think it gets easier, I think it progressively gets more difficult.
What were your expectations at the start of the season?
We came back with fairly high expectations for this group. We had a lot of returners from last year. We had a really strong season. We just wanted to continue to build on what we had started last season. I think we’ve made some really good progress with this group, and I think again going into next we’re only losing one player. [We have] one freshman coming in. I think we can continue again on what we’ve built on. [We had] high expectations for a very young, but experienced group because we had a lot of returners from last year.
Are recruits competing against each other to try to make it to LBSU?
There are a lot of strong programs out there. Recruits are all looking for different things. Really, my biggest concern when recruiting a player to come in is I want somebody who is still very motivated about their tennis. The college scholarship is not the ending point for them, but the beginning of a new chapter of their tennis career.
I also want someone who wants to be here at LBSU; this is their No. 1 choice, this is where they want to be. [We want players who] like what we have to offer in terms of tennis, academics and [who are] really on board straight away. I don’t want to have to convince somebody that this is the right spot for them. So those are really the two main things I’m looking for, and I think we’ve been getting those kind of players for the last three or four years.
Why do you think you’ve been so successful recruiting international players?
I was telling this to someone the other day. With all the social media and Skype and things like that, it really isn’t that much different than recruiting American kids. Really the only difficulty at times becomes bringing them in potentially on a visit. Logistically, sometimes that isn’t possible.
We’re able to talk to them via Skype and get some face time and things like that. They send me videos of them playing a match, which obviously is not like seeing them in person, but it’s almost as good. They just set up a camera and let it record the whole time. We’re able to see a lot and get to know them quite a bit even though they’re so far away. It’s become a lot easier. The world has become a lot smaller with all this social media.
How does having a winning reputation affect recruitment?
It’s helpful, especially for those players who are looking at this as the next step [after] their college career. They want [to go to] a program where they’re going to develop, and they want a coach that’s interested in their goals and helping them achieve those. I think we have a great record of developing our girls.
The main focus of my job is not just winning Big West titles, but making sure that each and every one of these girls in May is a better tennis player than they were when they started in September. If they haven’t made improvement on the court where they feel better as a player, I haven’t done my job.
